Escape Rooms – The Objective
As the name makes clear, the overarching goal of every escape room is to (brace yourself) escape the room. Simple enough! But good escape rooms provide a story, a mission, a challenge. As you work toward completing the objective, you’ll also be getting closer to escaping the room. Many times, getting out may even be a built-in part of the storyline. If you’re focused too much on just finding your way out instead of working on the mission, it will be a lot harder. And at Getout Games, you only have an hour to get out successfully!
Escape Room Tips
Here are three important things to remember if you want to get good at this fun experience. While each room you try will have its own story and puzzles, these are general escape room tips that can be applied to any of them.
1) Communicate
For real. As in actually talk to each other about what you are thinking and what you find. There are often one or two people in a group who are independent thinkers and like to go figure things out for themselves, or maybe demonstrate their whit by figuring things out first. These types can be useful when they are on the right track, but quite often they either miss out on key information or withhold information that could have helped in what someone else is working on. If the team communicates about how they are going to tackle things, then they can divide and conquer as well as waste less time. So, talk!
2) Take a second look
Things are not always what they appear to be, especially in a well-designed room. Don’t be too quick to pass something off as “just a vase”, “just a decoration” or “just” an anything! Many times things get ignored for a long while before someone finally pushes a button, sees a marking, or has an idea on how to incorporate it in a puzzle. It’s good to be thorough.
3) Plan ahead
Often, the first 5 minutes or so are spent just discovering all the items that are immediately available. It can get pretty wild. In the midst of the excitement and discovery, it’s good to have at least one person be in charge of coordinating the madness! Many rooms will have materials available to write down notes. If it’s there, USE IT! A common mistake is to become so absorbed on one or two things that the group forgets about other puzzles still waiting to be solved. Then, when the time is almost up, they realize they still had a major element to figure out! This is a challenge in every escape room- tip the scales in your favor by keeping track of what you still have left to solve. Then when the needed piece is found, you’ll know just how to use it.
Master these escape room tips and you’ll be an escape room master!